Rarely does a biography of a popular historical figure offer all the qualities that make for a good read: lively writing, a fresh perspective, significant insight, and a compelling narrative. Carwardine does all this and more ... There is simply no other Lincoln biography like it. -- Tom Schwartz, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library The publication of this beautifully written book, which makes use of the earliest evidence and the latest insights, marks a high point in a decade that has been particularly rich in Lincoln scholarship. No one seriously interested in Lincoln can afford to ignore Carwardine's judicious work.-- Daniel Walker Howe, Oxford University and The Huntington LibraryThe Atlantic can serve as a wonderful clarifying prism. Oxford don Richard Carwardine looks across it and paints a remarkable picture of the greatest of the Americans who fused the secular and the sacred.-- Gabor S. Boritt, Director, Civil War Institute, Gettysburg College As a staunch defender of national unity, a successful war-leader, and the emancipator of the slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays compelling claim to being the greatest of America's presidents. and as president, and focuses on the sources of his authority and achievement. It reveals his political talents and serious moral purpose but shows, too, how in pursuing office he depended on public opinion and the machinery of party. As war leader, he saw the limits as well as the possibilities of power, and looked beyond the government to other engines of support, including the churches, the humanitarian agencies and the volunteer Union army. Carwardine's study places Lincoln firmly within the changing context of his time, and shows his talent for reading and reaching many strands of opinion as he fashioned a national purpose. Emancipation became an end in itself, toward which God's own plan appeared to be driving him.Richard J. Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University. His publications include Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Yale University Press, 1993).